


The Codex of Gwen

by Altonym



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age II
Genre: Codex - Freeform, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-04
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-18 03:48:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1413946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Altonym/pseuds/Altonym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of codex entries regarding the late Gwendolyn I, High Queen of the United Free Marches (sometimes known as the Marcher Free State).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Codex of Gwen

 

 

> The events of the Fourteen Days are still shrouded in Marcher folklore; the account of the dictator Gwendolyn's ascent to power in Kirkwall changes with every telling, always to the political advantage of the speaker. Tevinter-sympathising historians as well as the Black Chantry deem Gwendolyn a great crusader for the rights of the independent Mage, while the Chantry in Orlais, chastened by the violent expansion of the United Free Marches, deems her rise to power a victory for Andrastian morality and the authority of the Templar Order, as typified by her marriage match and her intolerance of Blood Magic. Neither is really accurate; the actual Gwendolyn pursued a moderate stance throughout her life, attempting to shore up her own power at the expense of religious institutions. 
> 
> While the events of that fortnight remain mired in debate, the following facts are agreed. First, the vast majority of the Kirkwall Circle of Magi is annulled during the Night of Meredith's Purge. Knight-Commander Meredith herself is executed by the Champion, as is the First Enchanter of the Kirkwall Circle. Second, the Templar Order in Kirkwall undergoes an immediate and brutal purge at the hands of the new Viscountess, reduced to a mere third of its number in under a week and a half, and stripped of control over the Circle. The Circle, such as it is, is strongarmed under the authority of the Viscountess herself and her regime. Third, the City Guard becomes akin to Gwendolyn's private army, placing the entire city under martial law and conducting a steady string of executions. Fourth, an alliance is struck between Gwendolyn and Sebastian, Prince of Starkhaven, one that will eventually be transformed into a marriage alliance. By the end of the Fourteen Days, Viscountess Hawke has ironclad control over the city of Kirkwall.
> 
> What follows the Fourteen Days is a period between 8:37 and 8:44 Dragon, during which Viscountess Gwendolyn solidifies her rule and begins to establish Kirkwall's diplomatic character abroad. In a word, it is hostile. When Orlais refuses to recognise Kirkwall's new regime, Gwendolyn responds with a desperate proxy war of embargo, using bandit groups sourced from the now-impoverished Marcher population, as well as a privateer fleet under the notorious pirate Isabela Goldbreast. The sea lane raids of the Kirkwall privateer fleet are of legendary proportion - for a period of over three years, Orlesian traders are not safe even as far north as the Tevinter coast. With the Inquisition Crisis and a civil war ravaging the Empire, Orlais is unable to spare the resources to crush her authority, and in 8:42 Dragon the Free State of Kirkwall is officially recognised by Orlais.
> 
> During this period, Kirkwall's strongest alliances are with Starkhaven and Ferelden. Ferelden and Kirkwall form a formal alliance in 8:39 Dragon, to "recognise and back one another's constitutional sovereignty" - in other words, to ward off the Orlesians, towards whom Queen Anora has been pursuing a cautious, wary diplomatic policy. 8:40 Dragon marks the Starkhaven Insurrection, in which a coalition of Marcher lords, including Gwendolyn herself, rally behind Prince Sebastian to oust his cousin Prince Goran II, widely regarded as an incompetent tyrant. Sebastian's rise to power is far smoother than Gwendolyn's, recognised by all other Marcher cities other than Ostwick, and his reputation as a ruler of great piety earns him almost immediate recognition from the White Divine.
> 
> Sebastian and Gwendolyn solidify their alliance in 8:43 Dragon, marrying in the rebuilt Kirkwall Chantry. Their marriage is, as much as anything, a show of power - Chantry records show that they were present for a ceremony five years earlier, and they had been acting as one diplomatically for the better part of a decade by this point. Their ceremony, however, open to the public and hosted in a building that represented keenly the reversal of Kirkwall's fortunes, was designed as a message to the other Marcher Lords and to Orlais - "we are here, and we get things done."
> 
> Their alliance with one another quickly becomes known as the Marcher Compact, and in 8:44 Dragon swells to include Tantervale after the Compact sends troops to back the regency of the infant Queen Darialla IV. These three cities, the most powerful of the Free Marches, swear officially to regard their affiliation with one another as paramount above all others. This meeting in the dead of winter is traditionally used as the rough point at which Gwendolyn's foreign policy changes - from fiercely independent to expansionist. Between 8:44 and 8:47, Gwendolyn's Compact conducts a campaign of unification against the remaining cities of the Free Marches.
> 
> In Autumn 8:44, Ostwick's port is embargoed during a three-week siege, eventually broken when Gwendolyn's burgeoning cadre of Force Mages sneak onshore and sunder the city's fortifications from the inside. In Spring 8:45, Wycome and Markham are absorbed into the Compact via diplomatic treaty, their leaders sensing the blood in the water. Later that year, Hercinia falls to the forces of Prince Sebastian. 8:46 draws in an additional three Marcher cities. By 8:47, the remaining cities have become desperate, and launch a final campaign against Gwendolyn (according to Compact historians, supported fiscally by Orlais). Resistance to Gwendolyn and Sebastian is crushed at the Battle of Rudger's Pass, where once again Viscountess Hawke's state-regulated Circle shows their worth. Her Force Mages ambush the enemy army from the mountain passes, causing massive landslides and blocking off escape routes. It is this campaign which Hawke will later document in The War of the Stave, a treatise on the application of mage regiments to organised warfare, and a classic text of military theory.
> 
> In Cassus 8:47, the Viscountess and the Prince issue the Declaration of Kirkwall, which officially founds the United Free Marches. Gwendolyn and Sebastian announce themselves High Queen and King respectively, while defining constitutionally the rights of individual Marcher cities and the Crown. Marcher cities are, for the most part, self-governed, under a gaggle of varying titles, Princes, Queens and Viscounts alike. Each, however, swears fealty to the central government in Kirkwall.

**High-Genitiva Josie Travers, _Understanding Inquisition_ , 8:81 Dragon**

 

 

 

> What emerges from Kirkwall during this time is a new understanding of Andrastian ethics - one that rejects not only the tyranny of a magister past, but also the tyranny of Chantry rule. The Reform is founded not only on the fierce post-unification atmosphere of solidarity coursing through the Free Marches, but on a long history of Chantry abuses against mages, Templar abuse of authority, accounts of which are stoked by the Marcher government under Queen Gwendolyn I, who has reason to turn her people against both Tevinter and Orlais.
> 
> The heresy born in the Marcher ports is a simple one - a rejection of the concept of a Divine at all. The philosopher-king Sebastian, an early leader of the faith, publishes The Lie Of The Song in 8:50, a text which suggests that the White Chantry's monopoly on Andrastian theology is detrimental to the faith of the masses. He rails against the detachment of the Chantry from worldly affairs, and puts forward a tripartite argument for the practice of Andraste's will - that a healthy faith be based firstly on action, secondly on tradition, and thirdly on a personal understanding of the Maker.
> 
> It is perhaps natural that this revolution of Andrastian faith would be born of the Marcher Lords - forever subjugated piecemeal by the White and Black Chantries, constantly struggling for independence, the Marchers were only just beginning to forge a unified national identity of any real gravity by the time the Heresiarchs began preaching their beliefs. The emerging Marcher consciousness latches onto Reformed Andrastianism, and in 8:56 it becomes the official religion of the Free Marches after High Queen Gwendolyn sends a letter of dissociation to Divine Victoria in Val Royeaux.

**High-Genitivus Roland Paderborn, _The Second Schism_ , 8:93 Dragon**

 

 

 

>   
>  After her rise to secular power, Gwen became a thing unseen outside of Tevinter for many centuries - a mage-queen, a ruler in her own right. During her secular rule she continued the deep study of the arcane, using her new independent circle to pursue research on behalf of the nation. Most of the scholarship the Kirkwall Circle has inherited from her involves one question, which seemed to consume her more and more during her later life; how does one repair a deep wound in the Veil? The Kirkwall Tear proved longer-lasting than the brief, intense openings of the Inquisition Crisis; it was a deeper thing, based on hundreds of years of oppression and slaughter, hundreds of years of blood. The methods used to contain the Crisis proved, to Gwendolyn's ire, ineffective. One could close a rift, but a thinning of the Veil was a wider problem.
> 
> Her research notes document an attempt to find "the null discipline", a branch of magic that she believed would stand in opposition to blood magic (similar to the way in which the four major branches of magic are made of two sets of opposing complements). Gwendolyn sent her Mages on a great many expeditions, accompanying many personally, in search of ancient knowledge - anything that might point to previous attempts to stopper blood magic.
> 
> We know that she had frequent communication with the Dalish, through her ally and close friend Merill Sabrae, expert on Luvianic magic and one of the earliest members of the New Kirkwall Circle. Their correspondence on the nature of magic was published by High Genitiva Madlyn Yoering in 8:93, two years after Gwendolyn's death, as Discourses On The Fade. A mage and naturalist (and rumoured blood mage herself), Merill was greatly knowledgeable about historical Dalish accounts of blood magic and its reversal.
> 
> Under her guidance, the High Queen began a grand project of garden building throughout Kirkwall - according to the tradition of the northern Dalish, planting specific varieties of trees and binding them magically and regularly over time would begin an organic process of restoration, like a giant poultice. This garden-building served not only a magical purpose but a secular one, providing opportunity for Gwendolyn to develop the city's long-neglected public spaces.
> 
> As far as we of her Circle are aware, Gwendolyn never found her null discipline, but she left behind her a rich trove of research on the subject and many unchased leads. It is my personal belief that in searching for it, she created it. Among her magical achievements was the Soul Chain, a bidirectional ward placed between two people and reliant on trust, which protects both from domination via an enemy blood mage based on the strength of the connection. She provided new insights on the creation of nullification fields, adapting the school of the Spirit to her ambitions. Her work with Somniari began a process which would lead to the invention of the Dreamer's Skin, the first successful protective shield cast outside the Fade with a persistent effect within it. Finally, she was one of the finest practitioners of Force Magic in all of Thedas, and gave to the Kirkwall Circle a litany of instructive tricks, teaching methods and insights into the theory of force manipulation.
> 
> Though she is best remembered as the Founding Mother of the United Free Marches, the mage-queen who built a nation between two giants and saw it live, it is important not to underestimate Gwendolyn's contribution to the study of the Arcane. She, in many ways, modelled the New Andrastian ethic - the combination of the secular, magical, and spiritual in one life and one purpose. She has left behind her an independent nation that answers to no foreign Divine, and a city beginning to heal from her touch. Our Circle stands independent but resolutely opposed to blood magic, in defiance of the excesses of both Divines, free but not without control.

**First Enchanter Llywellyn Croft, _The Mage Queen_ , 8:96 Dragon.**

 

 

 

> The Soul Chain is, at its basis, a ward like any other - it provides protection against a specific form of magic. Its inspiration is drawn from a meeting of the schools of Creation and Spirit - I wanted to see whether it was possible to create a stopgap defense against blood magic domination while I pursue the null discipline. Hopefully, my work will be proven woefully obsolete by then.
> 
> I began by considering the nature of blood magic, and specifically the dark puppetry that masters of the field are able to exert upon others. Those who use this form of blood magic force a master-servant relationship with their victim - it is, like so many parts of blood magic, based upon violation. Like the magic of the demons, it affects the human psyche and compels obedience.
> 
> I realised that the key to resisting blood domination lay in volition - in choice. I have met a few who have managed to buck the control of a blood mage, and their stories always echo one another - they were among friends, perhaps a lover, they were close to whoever it was they were ordered to attack. These people were already unusually strong willed, but I had a hunch that the relationship between the victim and their loved ones was in some way key to finding a workable defence.
> 
> The technique I developed is in and of itself, simple - the movements and the focal idea can be found enclosed within this grimoire's index, and I believe that any competent mage could successfully cast it. The key to the chain, however, is something which can not be found through the naked pursuit of power; it lies in the relationship between the caster and the benefactor. This is the difficulty - an effective resistance to blood magic lies in deep, connected relationships, and I believe the historical susceptibility of circle mages to blood magic has something to do with the atmosphere of paranoia and fear that dominated many circles over the years. Without trust, it is easy to give one's life away to a demon who promises safety.
> 
> In summary, the effect is thus; cast the Soul Chain on a stranger and you have a very minor defence against blood domination - perhaps a few extra seconds in which to disrupt the blood mage. Cast it on a close friend, somebody you trust implicitly, and it has the potential to completely shrug off the attempt. During our disputes with the Tevinter Imperium I have observed Soul Chains so powerful that they damaged the blood mage who attempted to break them.
> 
> I will continue my study of this magic. I have not given up my search for the null discipline - it is my sincere belief that such a discipline exists, and that in it lies the key to Andraste's defeat of the Imperium - but an advanced form of my Chain has the potential, I believe, to block the magic of demons themselves, and not merely their human thralls.

**Gwendolyn Hawke, _The Null Grimoire_ , 8:61 Dragon**

 

> Mother of the Free Marches is a lofty title, and one that deceives about the nature of Gwendolyn's rule. The term conjures some sort of gentle, maternal birthing into nationhood, but the formation of the Marcher State was nothing of the sort. Gwendolyn built her nation on a foundation of guerrilla war, pursuing frequent proxy campaigns against her neighbours both for plunder and also to set the borders of the Marches in solid stone.
> 
> She took advantage of the central position of the Free Marches, as well as the relatively diverse population, to hybridise the Marcher military. In addition to the Kirkwall circle, which left unfettered grew rapidly (by 8:64 Dragon the second-largest after Minrathous), Gwendolyn had the services of an intensely loyal Ferelden minority, skilled in the light infantry tactics of the River Dane. She took advantage of the privateer fleets of the Marcher cities, now no longer set against one another but united in a savage reign of piracy against the Imperium and the Orlesian Empire. With the number of moderate apostates fleeing the wrath of the White Chantry but unwilling to throw themselves to the Black, Gwendolyn's armies had the highest ratio of mages outside the Tevinter Imperium, but were unfettered by a constant war of attrition against the Qunari. Quite the opposite, in fact.
> 
> In 8:72 Gwendolyn I signed a treaty of detente with "all followers of the Qun", ceasing her incessant raids of their navy. It was a calculated move in opposition to the Imperium, and heralded an era of relative religious tolerance throughout the Marches. This brought a high level of immigration and free trade, and Gwendolyn's "mongrel army" (as Orlais was wont to refer to it) drew in even more bizarre elements. What seems to be key to the success of Gwendolyn's raiding campaigns are the unpredictable tactics employed by her generals - types of magic unseen south of the Anderfels, shapeshifter cadres, the skilled force magic native to Kirkwall, frequent ambush, hostage-taking for ransom, and so on. Kirkwall's coffers filled with privateer and raider gold, which funded the expansion of the Circle, which attracted new mages, and a cycle of military growth continued.
> 
> As New Andrastianism spread throughout the Free Marches, a new order of mages grew out of the burgeoning, semi-independent Circle - a kind of templar-mage, opposed resolutely to blood magic and specialising in the neutralisation of other mages. Their ethos was based on the New Andrastian creed of the union of secular and arcane temperance, as advocated by the Philosopher-King Sebastian. Though several amnesties were called for Marcher apostates, in periods of apostate illegality this order (known as Andraste's Siblings) were brutally effective at hunting down and executing fellow mages.
> 
> This hybrid military ensured the Free Marches' survival throughout the frequent border wars it waged with its neighbours near and distant on almost all sides. The Mother's influence was more a crucible than a warming bath, but as a military leader Gwendolyn was nigh-unparalleled.

**Genitivus Martin Papillard, _Hawke: A Biography_ , 9:44**


End file.
